DOD servicemember website receives top 2013 Excellence award

The Defense Manpower Data Center’s Servicemembers Civil Relief Act website received the overall 2013 Excellence.gov Award for its work to protect members of the military at home.

The website allows financial institutions, creditors, landlords and others to determine if clients are currently on active duty in the military. The site also protects service members from negative actions, such as foreclosures, excessive interest rates and evictions. To protect, the website produces a certificate for the court that confirms the active duty status of the person.

The website also received the Excellence in Intergovernmental Collaboration Award. Visit the site.

The American Council for Technology/Industry Advisory Council bestows the annual awards.

The General Services Administration’s Office of the Chief Innovation Officer received the Excellence in Innovation: Digital Government Award. It won for its Drive to the Cloud Phase 2, which implements a cloud-based social collaboration and business application platform. Through the program, GSA had to deal with a legacy application portfolio and become more efficient in enterprise collaboration, “ideation,” and back-office modernization.

The Agriculture Department’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion received the Excellence in Enhancing the Customer Experience Award for its SuperTracker program. It’s a state-of-the-art, online diet and activity-tracking tool. The free application allows people to track what foods and how much they are eating, and how active they have been. It includes personalized goal-setting, virtual coaching and an option for journaling.

The IRS’ Customer Account Data Engine 2 received the Excellence in Enterprise Efficiencies Award. The CADE 2 began in 2009 to modernize how the IRS operates. In January 2012, CADE 2’s Transition State 1 began to deliver daily versus weekly tax return processing and also improve services to taxpayers.

The National Nuclear Security Administration received the Excellence in Innovation: Pilots and Start-up Projects Award. NNSA won for its Building YOURcloud infrastructure-on-demand service developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

YOURcloud is a secure, multi-tenant hybrid community cloud. It allows sites to retain their own autonomy while leveraging a common cloud computing platform. Officials can deploy resources into individually managed, secure cloud enclaves. It is the federal government’s first department-wide secure hybrid community cloud.

A panel of senior government and industry IT executives reviewed more than 130 nominations before narrowing the field down to the five winners recognized at this year’s awards ceremony.